


accustomed

by thir13enth



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, i am complete and utter rotting and stinking trash, this fluffy crap got so much longer than it needed to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7300912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/pseuds/thir13enth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never knows what to do with her hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	accustomed

**Author's Note:**

> bleghhh. ignore me and my current state of shallura trash.

After the Five Paladins are told who and what exactly they are, Princess Allura sighs deeply.

Whatever Coran will say to convince her, Allura still does not think that these Earthlings are the interstellar legendary defense force that she’s been looking for. Four creatures—young even by _their_ planet’s standards—and sure, the Black Paladin is the oldest one of them but even he doesn’t seem _recovered_ or at least completely put together—less so prepared to function as the core of Voltron.

Well—she’ll take who she can get, right?

She massages her temple with her right hand, closing her eyes briefly.

“Princess…Allura?”

She turns around. The Black Paladin has approached her, and he has his hand out in front of him, coming for her. She watches his hand, bracing herself for some kind of impact to her abdomen but he just holds his hand between them.

“I know you talked to us earlier but I thought maybe I should personally introduce myself,” he explains.

“Okay,” she agrees.

She still doesn’t really know exactly what to do with the limb that he’s stretched out toward her. So she doesn’t do anything with it, except stare.

“Uh, oh—sorry, I forgot you weren’t—“ He stutters his way through his words, and eventually just declares, “It’s a handshake. It’s…it’s okay. Sorry.”

“Handshake?” she asks, eyes never leaving his face.

“It’s something we do on Earth,” he explains, his hand still extended toward her. Then he corrects himself. “Well—in the United States, at least.”

“The United…States?” she repeats.

He waves off the last part of his statement. “Never mind. It’s—well, this is something we do.”

He withdraws his hand but Princess Allura is willing to get to learn the other planet’s customs—especially that of her Paladins. She’s a princess—a diplomat by blood.

Moreover, it isn’t like she’s ever going to be back on her planet with her customs and with her people ever again.

“No, no,” she retorts. “Let’s do this.”

“Oh, okay,” he agrees, and quickly whips out his right hand again.

She blinks a few times before reaching her hand out in the same manner. She’s mildly surprised when his metal hand takes hers in his hand and then shakes their clasped hands up and down.

Ah, a handshake—she realizes, and so proceeds to mimic the motions with her hand, gripping his and shaking his hand up and down.

The Black Paladin makes a soft pained sound. “Oh, haha, okay—“ he nervously laughs, pulling back his hand. “You’re pretty strong.”

“I suppose so,” she says. “Compared to an Earthling.”

She takes her hand back as well. She doesn’t understand the appeal in the handshake. The gesture wasn’t pleasant and his hand was cold.

Granted, that was his cyborg hand, his _metal_ hand, but she still decides that she doesn’t like handshakes at all.

.

.

The humans are strange—with strange smells, strange habits, strange customs—but Allura continues to try to understand the other aliens on her ship. It should be all worth it in the end, getting to know the five who carry her beloved father’s legacy on their shoulders.

Shiro, at least, can tolerate her incessant questions about his planet. She asks about his family, his parents, his siblings, his people, his absolutely everything because she is a curious person and he has already given her the permission to ask him whatever comes to her mind.

On top of that, he doesn’t seem to mind at all when she kicks back her feet and lies on the cold ground of the castle-ship, pretending to be on the lush green grasses of Altea.

And in fact, he joins her, lying on the cold ground, and he listens to her go on about her favorite plant and animals that she misses dearly, he listens to her tales about all the Altean mythology and people, he listens to her stories from her childhood and all the things she remembers.

Most of all, he listens to her silence—her silence as she remembers why she talks about all of this in the past tense—and she appreciates that, especially now as she lies back, her hands clasped over her stomach, staring up at the starless black space through the glass ceiling overhead.

“I miss the constellations,” she admits suddenly.

He looks over in her direction, waiting for her to continue. She pretends to not notice that he’s watching, keeping her eyes up at the endless night of space.

“I do, too,” he tells her, after he concludes she isn’t going to say anything more.

“There are no stars in space,” she replies—coming off a little sharper than she wanted to.

He doesn’t answer immediately to that. She doesn’t blame him. She regrets her blunt tongue, but before she can apologize, he’s already gotten up to his feet.

“Let’s go to the Galaxy Simulator,” he suggests. “Let’s create some stars.”

“Okay,” she agrees. She looks up at him, but quickly learns that she doesn’t like being on the ground when he’s standing straight up, so she immediately stands up to her feet right after him.

“Let’s go then,” he says, holding out his right hand to her.

She doesn’t exactly know what to do with his hand, but if memory serves her right, this is the custom from the States of United that she found so strange in the beginning. Without question, she takes his hand in his, curls her fingers around his metal hand.

“A handshake?” she asks him, hoping that she’s learning quickly.

He gazes at her for a long moment, a hint of a smile on his lips. His face flushes to a soft pink.

“Ah, no,” he finally tells her, looking down and off to the side. “This isn’t quite a handshake. I’m just…offering to hold your hand.”

“Oh,” she says, mistaken. “Well then.”

But she doesn’t take back her hand. His hand feels comfortable around hers—and albeit metal, she’s held onto it long enough already for it to feel warm.

“I rather like this handshake,” she tells him.

He laughs. She likes the crinkles that form at the edges of his eyes.

“I do, too,” he says.

They spend the night in the Simulator, making sure that every single detail is just right, and once Allura is satisfied that the stars and planets and moons are aligned, she lies back down on the cold hard metal floor of the castle-ship again.

He joins her for this, too. And so she tells him the stories of her constellations and points them out to him in the sky with one hand—her other hand stays clasped around his.

.

.

“You know,” she remarks to him suddenly after dinner, turning her head toward him. “We’re not too different after all.”

Shiro looks amused at her comment, pushing aside the plate in front of him—food long gone and eaten from it—so he can prop his forearms and elbows onto the table and come in closer. “What makes you say this?”

“Humans try their best to be their best,” she explains, leaning in as well. “And they care a lot about their friends and families and loved ones, but they also are open to even the most unfamiliar of strangers.”

“You think that makes us like you?”

“Well,” Allura says. She thinks a moment before continuing. “Not every species in the universe is born with…a free will, so to say. Many of them are born into a set role and simply do it without question. Their societies are just pyramids of hierarchies and empires, working as a colony and not so much as individuals. Their societies aren’t terrible—there’s a beauty to multiple units operating as a single breathing colony but they are not the same as us at all.”

“I see,” he replies.

But the Black Paladin still doesn’t look convinced, and there’s something in his eyes that makes her remember about that one story he told about the way his grandparents were treated during a world war and something else about a devastating bomb.

“I know you humans have had your fair share of civil wars and terrible terrible things but Alteans are not perfect either. We try to be but it doesn’t always work out. But we’re all the same—we have ideas, objects, people that we care about. And at the end of the day, we’re both just trying to find someone we—“

She cuts off suddenly, realizing what she is about to say. She tucks her hands under the table and between her thighs.

“I’m talking too much.”

He smiles gently. “I like when you talk,” he tells her. “I get to listen.”

She waves off his words with her hand, turning her head to completely face him. “Oh, you can’t possibly enjoy me rattling on and on about juniberries and the long gone fruits of Altea.”

“But I do,” he assures her, eyes intense.

Ironically, it’s in this moment that she decides to not talk any longer. The silence between them stretches and Allura feels an increasing urge to say something but she can’t think of anything at all to say so she blurts the first thing that comes to mind—

“Yes,” she says. “Well, as I was saying—we’re not too different at all! I mean…even just anatomically! Look at how similar our hands are!”

And she quickly puts forth her left hand in front of her, palm facing him. She takes his wrist from across the table and presses his palm against hers, then lines her fingers up along his. She notes the differences—his thumb is longer and his pinky has an extra centimeter on hers and his fingers are wider and well, they’re _metal—_

“We both have a thumb and four other fingers,” she rattles on, trying to distract from the fact that the hand that he has pressed up against her left hand is actually not his _human_ hand…

“It’s so perfectly matched,” she blabs. “Almost like we were always meant to meet!”

And once the words slip from her lips, she realizes that once again, she’s perhaps said too much. She blinks her embarrassment away as best as she can, maintaining eye contact with his eyes.

His eyes are unwavering.

“Meant to meet, huh?” he repeats, softly.

She doesn’t know exactly what to do with his hand—but when he shifts his hand a bit and folds his fingers between hers, she does the same.

.

.

Eventually Allura allows the Earthlings to do what they’ve been asking permission from her since day one on the castle-ship—have a grand ballroom party.

And Allura admits that at first she had been completely all business with the five Paladins and prevented them from doing anything but train until they fell to the ground, but she has long since grown to realize that she had unfairly high expectations for them—especially for the four that had just come out of Cadet Academy, and they complained and whined about missing all the fun events—like prom—that they are missing out on because they’re too busy saving the world.

So if they wanted a night of festivities and soft music playing overheard—how could she say no?

She lets them completely plan it out—lets them decorate the castle-ships largest central room with the prettiest lights and set out the most colorful banners. They send formal invitations to each other—as if this is all really a prom.

At first she pretends to not care at all about dressing up and looking sharp—like everyone else is—after all, this isn’t her custom. She doesn’t care at all about these silly things, and it’s not Altean at all. She’s just participating because she _has_ to and not because she wants to.

But as the hour nears, she finds herself getting a little caught up in the way that her hair is parted and in the color of her dress.

And as she walks downstairs to the event, she finds herself wondering who would even care for what she looks like and wondering who would go with who.

And as she steps into the prom room—seeing Keith take Lance’s hand, seeing Hunk and Pidge teach Coran how to samba—she finds herself looking for a certain someone…

“Hey,” he says.

She doesn’t have to turn around to find out who it is. She turns to him anyway.

“May I have this dance?” he asks, with a soft smile on his lips.

He extends a hand to her.

And this time, she knows exactly what to do with it.


End file.
